My eyes popped open at 4:30 yesterday morning, 2 � hours earlier than necessary. I came in here and noodled around on the web. Around 6 a.m. I could feel my eyes growing heavy. My bed beckoned, even though at most I could only have an hour�s sleep before we would have to get up and leave for Montreal.

Oh, but that hour looked tantalizing.

Well, I curled into the warmth of the spousal unit�s back and I guess I was sending out extremely powerful sleep waves, because neither of us heard the alarm. At 8 a.m. it was Enid who woke us up with her insistence that she would absolutely DIE of starvation if we did not give her breakfast.

We moved at a speed seldom seen in people in their 50�s and were out the door by 8:15. My surgeon stops doing patient consults at 11 a.m. and switches to surgery after that. It takes us 1 � hours to get from our home to the hospital if we drive the speed limit. We booted it into Montreal in record time only to be caught in downtown gridlock because we had left for the city too late. Tick tock tick tock.

We got to the hospital at 10:30 and were greeted with signs that all the hospital parking lots were full. Oh crap. The hospital is down town, finding another lot with space wasn�t going to be easy. Tick tock tick tock.

So I sprinted out of the car, leaving the spousal unit to hunt and gather parking, and ran half the length of the hospital to the entrance. I motored in the front door and down the hall to the elevators. 10:37. Tick tock tick tock. The Royal Victoria Hospital is a charming old hospital. It has elevators that tend to, uh, meander.

The lights indicated that there was no hope of an elevator any time soon. Dermatology is on the 9th floor. Nothing for it, stairward bound it was. After all, I am Marn, Warrior Princess, the woman who can endure 30 minutes on the Stairmaster machine.

Seriously, how much of a challenge could a mere 9 flights be?

Well, by the time I got up to Dermatology I sounded like a 93-year-old asthmatic who had climbed Mount Everest without benefit of oxygen.

But I was there with a whole eight minutes to spare.

When I explained the cause of my beet red face to the surgeon, he laughed and said most women my age could not sprint nine flights of steps. I pointed out to him that this is probably because most women my age are bright enough to never put themselves in a situation where they have to sprint nine flights of steps, which further cracked him up.

If you go back and look at my face from last week, you�ll note that a fair portion of its surface was covered with tape. Surgical tape. Surgical tape with a wonder adhesive. Getting the bandages off involved a world o� semi-leisurely pain because they could not be yanked off quickly in case things hadn�t healed well. Aye carumba.

As Frankenschnozz was being unwrapped, I focussed in on my surgeon�s face intensely. I could see he was worried about what he might see. When the final gauze came off and he grinned, I realized that the pain I was feeling in my chest came from the fact I had been holding my breath.

Whew.

It�s healed well. No infection. He pulled out his digital camera to take a picture for his students. I went to take out my digital camera to get him to take a picture for the archives of MarnCo--the ruthless multinational behind The Big Adventure--only to find that I had left my digital camera in the car, with the spousal unit, who was probably aimlessly wandering about some sub Arctic region of Canada looking for parking. Crap.

The surgeon put on a second bandage, which comes off right in time for the Jug for the Jugs. In six weeks I go back to have the scar assessed, and if there are any ridges, he will sand them down to make the scar as invisible as possible.

For the moment I am studiously ignoring the conjunction of the words �sanding� and �skin�.

From this wondrously out of focus picture you can get a vague sense of what he did during my surgery. (It hurts too much to put my glasses on to focus the camera.)

He cut a long line above my mouth, along the natural crease I get when I smile. Then he cut around the base of my nose and then on to the area where he had removed the cancerous skin. That means almost all my scarring will be hidden in natural crevices creases of my face.

He reached under those cuts, detached the skin in my cheek from my face as far back as the outer corner of my eye, and then lifted and pulled it to fill in the hole in my nose. He tacked it in place, snipped off whatever did not fit into the smile crease after the re-alignment, and then stitched me together. Now that the bandages are off and there�s pressure on the area, the cheek skin and my nose hurt, but nothing serious.

I�ll get my first full look at Frankenschnozz on Sunday, when I do the Jog for the Jugs. From what I can see now, it�s not nearly as bad as I feared. I am grateful he took so much care.

I left Dermatology (aka The Planet of the Pasty People, because trust me, no one who works in dermatology has a tan) and went downstairs just in time to meet the spousal unit who had found cheap metered parking a mere half hour walk from the hospital. This is unheard of. I think that if he could have, the spousal unit would have had the meter bronzed and taken it home with us in triumph, just as some hunters have their kill stuffed and mounted.

The first thing I did after we got home? Throw my gym gear into my car and motor down to the gym. It wasn�t a hard workout, but it felt glorious. Man oh man, but I�ve been missing those happy making endorphins. A lot.

On my way home from the gym I did another round of collecting for the Jug for the Jugs. Along the way, I found out that two more people my age I know casually also have skin cancer. Yeesh.

I know that a lot of my three loyal readers are zygotes. Every time you stick your nose out the door, please make sure your skin is protected, because even you know what? All the pain, both physical and mental that I�ve been through, all the expense of lost wages that the spousal unit and I had had to kiss off while I got treatment, all of that was avoidable.

I know you�re smarter than I am. This is your chance to prove it.

--Marn

Here are the Generous Souls Sponsoring me to Run to Limp the 2004 Jog for the Jugs In Montreal on Oct. 3, the few, the proud, the Bazonga Boosters:

Mileage on the Marnometer: 686.55 miles. .
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers